We headed down to town and then up to the Tiger Cave Temple to attempt the 1237 steps leading to the summit of the rock on which the Buddha statue is built. It’s been uniformly hot these few days. The day we arrived was a cloudy day which misled me into thinking that Krabi had a cooler climate, but the days since have been scorchingly hot, with a downpour on Thursday.

We started up the stairs, some of which are mind-bogglingly high. You have to lift your feet really high to climb such steps, and while that’s not really a problem going up, it makes it tricky (at least for me) to come down. The position of the staircase on the side of the mountain meant an increasingly panoramic view the higher up we went, along with an unfortunate side helping of vertigo for me.

We made it up 200 steps – about 100 m in height – when I gave up. The thought of going much higher up the side of a mountain, and then going down, was too much to handle. I took in the view of green fields and the occasional limestone karst, and started down. A black dog followed us down. It had seemed as apprehensive as I was about descending, and we made it to the bottom together.

The boyfriend, being unafflicted by acrophobia, contemplated going it alone, but figured he didn’t really want to. We waited under a tree for a songthaew, and I took a picture of a marmalade cat lapping at the water of a lotus pool. Eventually we decided it would be a long wait, and our time might be better served if we walked out to the main road. A motorbike taxi rider offered us a songthaew taxi for 50 baht each, which didn’t differ very much from the 40 baht we paid coming in, so we went downtown to go shopping.

Their Vogue departmental store was well-stocked with Adidas, Le Coq Sportif and Guy Laroche, but the prices weren’t attractive enough. Lunch was at Cafe Europa, a place serving Scandinavian food. The bill was a tad expensive but the food was quite delicious, I quite enjoyed my pineapple milkshake. Wilted by the afternoon sun, the boyfriend and I bid our last farewell to the noisy bustle of Krabi Town.

The TV was on ESPN all afternoon as we watched the team analyses and warm-up shows for the FA Cup final. For dinner we continued our search for Cafe 154, and found it this time, only to discover it was closed, probably because it was low season. Bernie’s Place buffet it was. I had the steak buffet, which I found a bit chewy but the boyfriend pronounced it just nice. The baked potato had a smooth, almost-raw consistency that went very well with a creamy, cheesy Bernaise sauce. Then the boyfriend had 2 cups of ice-cream, and not some dodgy brand but Nestle ice-cream, because he was especially fond of rum ‘n’ raisin. The man at the next table warned us not to eat the purple ice-cream because ‘it tasted like chicken curry’. I don’t know how correct he was, I’m not very fond of purple ice-cream in any case.

Back in the hotel. I had a fun time arranging for an early-morning taxi to the airport. The staff’s limited English and my nonexistent Thai made it a less than straightforward effort, but I suppose the message got through in the end. I threw a tantrum when ESPN kept broadcasting Major League Baseball instead of my team’s FA Cup Final, but the boyfriend channel-surfed and found it being broadcast on a Thai channel. I had to miss out on the English commentary, but as long as I could make out the names, it was easy to keep track of the game. It went on until nearly midnight, so we didn’t get very much sleep before waking early for our flight.

Today was a very lazy day. The original plan was to head out to Tiger Cave Temple, but the boyfriend didn’t feel so good so we stayed in until lunchtime. It turned out to be just as well, I forgot it was Vesak Day, so the temple would have been super crowded.

We walked down the length of Noppharat Thara beach looking for cheap hawker food. The weather was bright and hot and to add to that, the day trippers were particularly numerous. Eventually we stopped at a Muslim food stall for rice. Our bill came to 65 baht for 2 plates of fried rice, instead of 60 baht because I opened a bottle of drinking water. I figure 5 baht for a big bottle of clean water isn’t too bad a deal.

We hopped on a bus for the ride back because it was simply too hot to walk that far. We emerged from the room after 6 pm (like vampires, hahaha) when the sun was lowering, to collect our laundry from the shop down the road. We originally headed to the Last Cafe on Ao Nang but we couldn’t find it, and we had the same luck with Cafe 154. So eventually we ate Pad Thai and seafood noodles at a roadside stall. It was another 60-baht meal, and this time we walked back to our hotel to save on bus fare.

We had a giant breakfast at Narima before we departed for Krabi Town. I had an American breakfast with poached eggs, simply because I’d never seen a poached egg before. It’s not to my taste, it’s too bland. I had a better time with my toast and ham. Meanwhile, the boyfriend’s banana pancake was a real pancake with banana slices arranged in a smiley face, and not a banana prata-type thing.

The van to Krabi came right at 10 am. It was rather crowded this time, with 12 passengers, some of whome had got on along the way. We were the last to be dropped off at our destination, and it was past 1 pm. We walked all the way to May and Mark’s Cafe on Maharat Soi 2 carrying our suitcases.

This cafe is famous for its sourdough bread, and I wanted to try it. They even have homemade yogurt which tastes just like the store-bought kind. While we were there, it started to rain and then to pour. We were stuck there until it let up, because we had to walk to Maharat Road to take a songthaew back.

It was crowded in the songthaew as well with 10 passengers, and because we were seated right inside, we had to squeeze past everyone to alight. I wanted to pay 30 baht each but I’ve pretty much accepted that 40 baht is the standard fare to and from town.

We had dinner at Wanna’s Place, located on the Ao Nang beachfront strip. It’s a Thai-Swiss eatery famous for its som tam and rosti. This was after we had an hour of being stretched and kneaded during a traditional Thai massage at Banlay Salon, which was quite reasonably priced at 200 baht. Although it got a bit painful at times, the pressure was tolerable. They even served us some kind of ginger tea after our massage.

Wanna’s Place is a bit pricey, we were the only non-Caucasians dining there. The food is pretty authentic, although service was not that good in that we had trouble catching the waiters’ attention.

I had a spot of after-dinner shopping, because I wanted one of those shirts with beer logos on it. I had a choice between Chang Beer and Red Bull, and in the end I settled for the elephants. On the way back, we stopped at the Net cafe down the road from our resort, where we got to use their newest desktop with card reader so I could transfer my photos to my thumbdrive. The bill came up to 47 baht, we dug up 45 baht and the guy said it was ok, 45 was fine. We were starting to run short on money, so every little bit helps.

We were again the breakfast stragglers, heading down 15 minutes before it ended. There was a bit of a fuddle, I expected a buffet spread but was presented with a menu. We soon cleared up that we had 200 baht worth of credit to spend, which we could use by ordering a full American breakfast, or by picking and choosing from the a la carte menu. I had an omelette and bacon while the boyfriend had boiled rice, a Thai omelette and French toast. The boiled rice turned out to be similar to Teochew porridge.

After breakfast we took turns lying in the hammock on the balcony. The boyfriend took the word ‘relax’ to new heights by sleeping till lunchtime. He wouldn’t have slept so soundly if not for liberal applications of insect repellent. We wanted to venture out and see the rest of the beaches, and the best way was to hire a motorbike. The boyfriend tried riding one, but controlling the direction and throttle proved to be something you can’t master in 15 minutes, so we gave up, declined the offer of a taxi and set off on our intrepid way down the road.

Along the way we saw (and smelled) 2 bunches of elephant poop (elephants don’t stand still to poop, so it was a trail of dung), several flattened frogs and many, many villagers zipping past on motorbikes, staring at these two nutso tourists. We stopped at a vista of a rocky bay to rest in the shade of a tree and take some pictures. Further down the road, we walked through a local village and found the dirt road leading to our destination – Same Same But Different. The restaurant had been recommended to us by the resort owner.

The dirt road didn’t precisely lead to the restaurant. Rather, we walked along the beach until we saw a walkway leading to Pimalai Resort, and this is where we started our bluff. We made our way to the reception counter of Pimalai (which is a very posh, pricey and exclusive resort) and inquired as to their Internet service. We were courteously led to the library where we played half a game of chess (the boyfriend checked me) while waiting for one of the terminals to be free. Internet use was free for guests, and the staff had just assumed we were guests. You’d never get away with this in a KL hotel, they are always suspicious and will ask for name and room number. The Thai spirit of hospitality means that all tourists are treated with the same courtesy, whether you’re a middle-aged European or an Asian uni student. And their emphasis is on serving the guests, not policing everyone who comes in to ensure that no freeloaders (i.e. us) are costing them profits. That’s probably why we got away with it.

We needed the Internet to book our rooms, and we even had the audacity to print out the booking confirmation on their laser printer. So we got the task done for free, but we walked a very long way to do so. Thankfully, Same Same was right next to Pimalai so we had a light lunch there, and continued with our shameless freeloading by lying on Pimalai deckchairs. The resident pet dog lounged on the beach and politely posed for the camera, then trotted off to accompany one of the staff who was fishing on the beach.
We ate dinner at Same Same while watching the sun go down. It wasn’t very spectacular, but it was pleasant not to have any buildings in the way. We had called back to The Narima for transport, so shortly after 7 pm, the owner herself picked us up in her four-wheel drive. It was a short 10-minute drive back, but it certainly seemed very much longer when we were plodding along in the afternoon heat. The owner had told us it was 3 km from Narima to Same Same, and we must have been a bit nutso to walk that far, at the hottest time of day.

We had a lovely dip in the pool when we got back, so that for a change we didn’t have to support our own weight. A jar of egg rolls was sitting invitingly at the reception, so we helped ourselves. Our laundry came back, soft and clean. Man, I could get used to this Thai hospitality thing.

We were the last stragglers at breakfast before it ended at 10am, then we checked out of the hotel to get downtown to board the minibus to Ko Lanta. We had a nasty shock at checkout when it turned out they charged us 1200 baht instead of the 900 baht we were expecting. When I had emailed them, they offered us 900 baht, so I thought that was the going rate, but apparently the walk-in rate is much higher.

When we arrived at the minibus counter, our bags were loaded and we were shown our places on the vehicle (really just a van), 45 minutes before our scheduled departure time. We had been hoping to stop for lunch downtown, but that had to be scrapped. The bus was full after 2 more passenger pickups, and it was 2 hours later that we arrived at the ferry crossing. I slept soundly for most of the way, not even occasionally cracking an eye open to see where we were. So I suppose it could be said that we were there in the blink of an eye. Heh.

The first ferry crossing took about 15 minutes, if you don’t count the time spent waiting. That took us to Lanta Noi, and a short drive gets you to the 2nd crossing which takes you to Lanta Yai, which is the tourist spot proper. Once on Lanta Yai, the minibus driver seemed to operate as some sort of courier as he dropped off items at several places, in addition to the other passengers.

He found our resort, The Narima, by talking on the mobile while driving, but he found it without adding on to travel time, so that’s fine. We had to pay an extra 50 baht each because the cost of our original ticket only covered transport to the pier, and not to the hotel.

The Narima resort is hidden among trees, and our bungalow was up on the hill so we lugged our suitcases up several flights of stairs before arriving at our wood-and-bamboo bungalow. A staff member fixed up our hammock outside while I used the modern toilet, which is in an open-air bathroom in the Thai style. By that, it means the walls don’t reach the roof, so it’s more like a cubicle than a room.

We had a late lunch at the hotel restaurant, then walked down the road where we saw a couple of small elephants and their handlers. We wanted to use the Net to book our rooms for the return leg in Krabi, but the computer lacked the necessary plugins to complete the transaction. Furthermore, we were paying 2 baht a minute for a 28.8k connection, so it was doubly disadvantaging compared to the mainland. There was an Internet facility down the road, but it was so totally deserted that we literally saw no one at all. Very strange.

Hot, sweaty and mildly annoyed, we went back to our bungalow and napped till dinnertime. Dinner was at the restaurant again, with rice, a different Thai salad (we’ve had papaya, prawn and beef) and squid and pork with sauce. For dessert, we ordered pineapple fritters with ice-cream. Though the meal was a bit expensive – a salad was 100 baht – we were satisfied.

The pool glowed green in the night, while the frogs croaked and the moon shone especially brightly. We stood on the beach looking at stars while the endless waves crashed on shore. Then we had to do prosaic things like drop off our salty laundry from kayaking day so it would be clean when we checked out.

We got up bright and early for breakfast because the kayaking company people were coming to pick us up at 8.30 am. Breakfast was a lacklustre affair, if you’re the type who expects full morning feasts. The selection was limited to toast, sausages, ham and eggs. The orange juice seemed to be fresh-squeezed, however, if the presence of pulp is any indication.

The pick-up from the kayak company came at 8.40 am. We were the last on the route to be picked up as our hotel was the nearest to the kayak pier. However, proximity is only relative, as it was still a long ride through rural scenery to the pier. At one point, the famous limestone karsts were visible, rising out of the sea, offering us a taster of what we would soon experience.

Suited up with lifejackets, paddles and drinking water, the boyfriend and I got into a kayak and launched ourselves off into the wild ocean. Except that it was remarkably calm and even shallow in places. There was no fear of capsizing the kayak, it was a wider-bodied one and there was no current. We followed the lead boat through canyons and mangrove jungle, where the boyfriend and I battled some mangrove roots that wanted to ensnare us. We didn’t see any animals in the mangrove swamp, although there were lots of fish, swimming in schools below our kayak.

The first part over, we paddled to the escort boat and got onboard. Two barnacle-encrusted rocks our in the sea had several boatloads of snorkeling tourists floating butts-up around them. It turned out that these rocks marked the site of some corals teeming with fish. We were supposed to get off the boat into the ocean (me? Swim in the sea?) and paddle to the rocks.

The lifejacket worked in keeping me afloat – very important since there was no way I could have swum in the sea, out of my depth. However, the large armholes of the lifejacket meant that I was lower in the water than I wanted to be. Clasping the snorkel mask firmly to my face and breathing noisily through the tube, I put my face below the surface and watched as fishes nibbled at the surface of the corals, and looked at my own toes hanging below me, with another 6 feet of seawater between them and the seabed. It is a curious, vertigo-like feeling. The corals weren’t colourful, but they were healthy and teeming with life, so the frequent tourist excursions must not have affected them too badly.

While swimming back to the boat, I felt my foot make contact with something soft, and turned to see a translucent, bumpy pinkish dome float to the surface. I called the boyfriend over and pointed it out to him as a jellyfish. My left ankle started to itch a bit, and I was worried that it had stung me. Perhaps I’d killed it as I was swimming along, since jellyfishes don’t normally sunbathe at the surface. The guide assured me that the jellyfish in the area didn’t sting, and if they did, I would have developed red welts instead of just a vague itch. Anyway, I’m still here to tell the tale, so he was right after all.

Back on the boat, we took a tour of Ko Hong’s hidden lagoon, a shallow bay nearly enclosed by limestone cliffs. Then we beached on the white sands of another bay, where fishes swam in and out with the waves. Lunch was a simple affair of rice, vegetables and fish, followed by freshly-cut watermelon and pineapple. I’d heard stories of hardly-palatable packed lunches on such tours, so this was a nice surprise. The only other group on the tour with us was a Thai family of four, on a family trip before the two boys went back to school. The obstetrician father did all the talking, on account of the government having launched a ‘Speak English’ campaign so that they could communicate with tourists.

The boyfriend and I frolicked in the surf after lunch, sitting on the sand and chasing schools of fish down the shore. The fish came into water only inches deep, and then out again as the waves receded. After a while we got bored, and with more than an hour to burn, we got on our kayak and paddled around a couple of outlying rocks. We decided against circumnavigating the island, because there’s adventurous and there’s stupid.

A long boat ride back to the mainland later, the boyfriend emerged from the tour company’s office 100 baht poorer, holding out a digital printout of our picture, taken by a staff member before we set off. I had expected something like this, but since it was quite a nice picture, I didn’t feel annoyed. At least we posed nicely for it, as compared to the roller-coaster rides that catch you looking like a screaming banshee.

Back at our resort, I went to pick up our laundry and was amazed to find that a few articles of clothing could weigh 5 pounds, or 2.5 kilos. At 35 baht a kilo, our bill was 88 baht. These were our smelliest clothes from moving day, plus socks and underwear, and they all came back powder-fresh. Then we ventured downtown for dinner at Bai Toey restaurant.

The songthaew was supposed to operate as a bus, but for some reason they asked us to hire them as a private taxi, and they’d take us to town for 100 baht each. I don’t know if it was because we were tourists or we were the only ones left on the vehicle. We didn’t really want to pay because it felt like extortion – we were in a rural area and it didn’t seem like other buses were passing by – but I demanded that the driver take us to a specific place in town, rather than just the main area where most tourists were.

We got off at Chao Fa Pier, partly because that was where we wanted to be, and partly because I wanted to be off the ‘taxi’ as soon as possible. The driver stopped, we handed him 200 baht and ran off. I’m always worried that once you arrive at your destination, the drivers will demand more money, so we scarpered while we still knew where we were.

Despite being told that Vichit Road was ‘far, very far’, we footed it and found our restaurant just past the turning that was our marker for turning back if we didn’t find anything. We had walked quite far out with no sign of any restaurant anywhere, but the lights caught our attention and all that walking was rewarded.

We went a bit overboard with ordering, starting with som tam and tom yum goong and adding green curry, vegetables with salted fish and the boyfriend’s “must-try” dish, squid with salted egg. The squid had been recommended by a website, and the boyfriend pronounced it well worth the walk.

The food stalls at Chao Fa Pier were still open when we went there after dinner, so we watched as the hawker made a banana pancake. He added condensed milk and sugar to others’ pancakes, so the boyfriend requested no sugar on his. Just watching the amount of condensed milk he poured was enough to cause a toothache. The warm, mushy banana was a good contrast to the crisp pancake, but all in all it was very similar to the banana pratas readily available behind NUS.

We made our way to Maharat Road and were passengers #5 and #6 to board the waiting songthaew, at which point the driver decided he had critical mass and set off. We got off on the main tourist strip of Ao Nang instead of further down at Nopparat where our hotel was, so that we could have a stroll back. We stopped in the hotel lobby to use the computers for a while, but my terminal was slow and somewhat infuriating so I gave up and went to bed.

The Budget Terminal is very bright. The overhead lighting is quite harsh, and the aircrew’s makeup looks terrible in such lighting. The building feels like a giant hangar to which someone just decided to add some counters. Unlike Changi, they don’t pretend that you’re a first-class passenger worthy of star treatment. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a decent terminal, but its cheapness is so blatant I felt as though I was being punished for flying with a low-cost carrier.

Things get better after immigration clearance. There are seats, which were lacking in the public area, and even free Internet terminals (where the boyfriend got held up for a while, reading his football news). Duty-free had no MAC or Stila (boo for me), although for some reason they had Urban Decay and Paris Hilton Perfume.

We sat down within view of the tempting display of the chocolatier, and waited anxiously to find out our boarding gate. Ah, the joys of free seating. Our ticket says you have to board at least 30 minutes before departure, but haha! They only announced the gate 30 minutes before departure anyway. So now I’m confused as to how the system works. We were almost the last in the boarding queue, but the plane wasn’t full so I had a window seat from which to watch the sunrise, and the boyfriend had the back row to lie down on.

I gave a stewardess a bit of a shock by not locking the lavatory door while I was putting in my contact lenses. Luckily for both of us, I was not sitting on the throne. The stewardess had opened the seemingly empty lavatory to spray it with some air freshener.

An uneventful flight was followed by a long queue at immigration, but the immigration officer greeted us with ä½ å¥½ (ni hao) and generally behaved very politely. While they may not be as efficient as Singapore’s immigration, they certainly have a human touch.

A taxi for 600 baht (the standard price) brought us to our hotel, Srisuksant Resort. It was still early – slightly past 9 am local time. Our allocated room had only recently been vacated, so I sat outside on the balcony resting my feet while the chambermaid made up our room. After she left, we were unable to resist the softness of the bed, after our rough night sleeping on plastic Changi chairs, and fell fast asleep.

After several hours and several attempts, we woke up properly and caught a songthaew for the 40-minute ride into town. Deposited in the middle of town, our first order was to secure transport to Ko Lanta, for which the clue given was ‘opposite the Thai Military Bank’. Asking the staff at 7-11 didn’t help, as outside of the tourist area, English is very rarely spoken. We wandered up and down the roads till the boyfriend spotted it along Maharat Soi 6, and we completed our first task.

We bought Pad Thai, skewered chicken and a sweet, warm dessert from a market, then devoured our lunch. The dessert was similar to bubur cha-cha, with mango strips and strange bits of coloured jelly added. Our 2nd order was to find a kayaking tour. I wanted a particular provider that combined 2 tours into one day, making the most of our trip. We were the only ones booked on the trip so we negotiated 20% off the price. The company is called Sea Kayak Krabi and their office is on Maharat Soi 2, although the tours themselves are based in Ao Thalane.

At this point, we were high on ourselves and our good luck in actually managing to do what we set out to do. Another songthaew ride and we were back in our room. We walked to Ao Nang for dinner at Bernie’s Place, because it had a buffet. It’s not gourmet food, but some parts are very delicious. The fry-up dish of potatoes and sausages was so sinful I called it ‘heart attack on a plate’. We got suckered into buying some clothes – I got a top and a wrap skirt, while he got the stereotypical singlet – and we had drinks at JJ’s Bar to justify our sitting and watching the Arsenal-Wigan match.

It was mad exciting, and we made the acquaintance of Nick and Annie from London, who fortunately were also Gunners supporters. It was a tense finale as Henry scored a hattrick and West Ham beat Spurs to give Arsenal fourth place and a possible Champions League spot. Nick bought us both drinks, we had a little chat about where we’d been so far and what was good to see, and then we had to walk the unlighted streets back to our hotel. The bar down the road was blasting ghetto tunes but all was serene in our little slice of Krabi.

Following in the footsteps of the intrepid Cowboy Caleb, my boyfriend and I went on vacation in Krabi, Southern Thailand. Here is some background information you need in order to fully understand the daily entries for the trip.

Krabi is a province in Southern Thailand, but it’s not near the riot hotspots. There is a significant Muslim population. Krabi’s main claim to fame is the limestone karsts that pop out sporadically from the countryside and the ocean. The better beaches have powdery white sand, clear blue seas that blend into the sky at the horizon, and schools of fishies that are particularly fond of being hand-fed bread.

Off the coast of Krabi, there are a number of notable islands, one being Phi Phi Leh Island where “The Beach” with Leonardo DiCaprio was filmed, and another one somewhere was featured in a James Bond movie. And no, it wasn’t “Dr No”. Ko Lanta is a large island in the southeast, where we spent a couple of days just chillin’. Krabi’s limestone cliffs also attract rock climbers, but we’re not into that.

While we were on the mainland, we stayed at the Srisuksant Resort, and we were at The Narima during our time on Ko Lanta. We booked Srisuksant online using a hotel booking agent because it was so much cheaper, and I emailed the owners of The Narima directly to book our bungalow. While it’s called a bungalow, this boutique resort believes in blending into nature, so our bungalow was built out of woven bamboo, and topped off with a thatch roof.

We got around Krabi by way of songthaews, which are pickup trucks and small lorries fitted with a roof and two benches in the back (‘songthaew’ means ‘two rows’). There are numerous other hire-vehicles available, but I never fully figured out if they were samlors (motorcycle sidecar taxis) or tuk-tuks. They sure didn’t look like the tuk-tuks I rode in Bangkok, but it could be a regional variation.

There is an airport tax when leaving Krabi (on international flights, if that wasn’t obvious) to the tune of 400 baht, or 20 Singapore dollars if you’re running low on baht. I suppose it would be 40 ringgit, 10 US dollars… depending on the person at the check-in counter.

It might be worth noting that the boyfriend and I went to Krabi with no knowledge of the Thai language, no Lonely Planet guidebooks, and no phrasebooks. Our main source of information was a free magazine distributed at the airport, and we supplemented that with our prior Internet research. Budget travelling at its best.

I spent the day variously packing and moving my possessiongs into storage. Packing was the easy part compared to what came next. Having successfully closed the lid of my giant pink suitcase, I had to put them at the car park so that the bf’s friend could load them into his car. The bf helped me with Big Pinky, pulling it up one step by one laborious step. Then the bf’s friend delivered the clincher. The car, which had been smoking ominously after doing the bf’s trip, had now given up the ghost. The friend called his mum who insisted on bringing down the large family car, and we managed to put all my stuff in one load.

We went back to the storage room after dinner because I had some msicellaneous stuff I had put aside, anticipating a lack of space. We loaded up a cab and bid farewell to our rooms. Items safely stored, we boarded a bus to Harbourfront, then took 3 different trains to finally arrive at Changi Airport. We weren’t due to check in at the Budget Terminal till 5 am, so we wandered around looking for a place to sleep.

The Terminal 2 viewing mall was too bright and noisy – some kids were playing takraw. So we took the Skytrain over to Terminal 1 where their viewing mall was much quieter. The chairs were extremely uncomfortable, but we got some sleep. Or at least I managed to doze a bit. We left Terminal 1 by walking to Terminal 2 where we caught the bus to the Budget Terminal, where our adventure truly begins. Cos the Budget Terminal is new, see, and you go on holiday to see new things.